This is an issue which bothered me throughout all three levels of the CFA, since Ethics is prevalent in all three levels. However, I did not want to get a backlash from the CFA Institute in case I complained about this matter before obtaining my charter! I don’t understand why they keep using the word “dissociate” instead of “disassociate”. Don’t they have a basic spell checker? It didn’t help that I despised Ethics, but that certainly got on my nerves.
D__issociate and disassociate have the same definition—to remove from association or to cease associating. English reference books tend to recommended dissociate over disassociate. There’s no etymological reason for this, as the words are approximately the same age (though dissociate is probably a little older), and there is plenty of precedent in English for both forms. The preference for dissociate probably has to do with its brevity. In any case, disassociate has gained ground over the last half century or so. Though it’s still less common than dissociate, many writers seem to use the words interchangeably, and both forms appear often in edited publications.
#NowYouKnow
And all this time I’ve been angry for nothing!